Former Sonic Donaldson enters Seattle mayor's race

Published 10:00 pm, Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Seattle businessman and former Seattle Sonic James Donaldson is officially running for mayor.

Donaldson sent out a news release saying he has spoken with hundreds of people in neighborhoods across the city.

"My years as a small businessman and in sports have taught me the values and virtues of working towards successful goals and strategies, perserverance, positive mental attitude and most importantly…team work," he said in a statement.

Attorney Michael McGinn also announced this week that he's challenging two-term incumbent Mayor Greg Nickels. Stranger editor Dan Savagesays he will run as well, though he promised to resign after 24 hours if elected and allow the City Council to pick a mayor.

Sandeep Kaushik, a spokesman for the mayor's campaign, said Nickels welcomes his opponents into the race.

"It's clear with both Michael McGinn and James Donaldson getting into the race this week that we're going to have a healthy debate about the future of the city," Kaushik said. "We look forward to that."

Kaushik said Nickels will emphasize his environmental record as well as his role in getting last year's light rail initiative passed and other job creating measures, like working to keep online retailer Amazon.com based in Seattle.

In his statement, Donaldson said as mayor among his priorities would be to initiate performance auditing in every city office and to support the City Council's goal to use a budgeting process by which agencies must cite specific priorities. He also said he would freeze all utility increase not associated with increased cost for services and -- in light of concerns about getting enough funding - review the viability of the current Mercer Street improvement proposal and for the Alaskan Way Viaduct tunnel replacement project